This means that you can be chatting with friends on MSN, talking to a friend on Google Talk, and sitting in a Yahoo chat room all at the same time. Pidgin (formerly called GAIM) is a chat program which lets you log in to accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. So how do we get free software that let’s us talk to multiple IM clients? A super-simple online option is Meebo but you need to be logged into the website to use it.įor a while the best deal in town was GAIM: They are still around today and have a pretty dedicated following but the service costs about $25 to get started and it has to be renewed for upgrades: “A license to Trillian™ Pro costs $25.00 entitling you to unlimited use of the version of Trillian™ Pro you purchased along with one year (i.e., 365 days) of support and upgrades as set forth below.” One of the early pioneers in IM interoperability was Cerulean Studio’s Trillian. Flashing lights and shaking screens took instant messaging from a serene, zen-like walk in a park experience to the county fair on crack and acid. ICQ started adding advertisements, games, FTP servers, and other bloat as did the other major players. All I want to do is see my brother pop online, say hello, maybe send a photo or a file. The second major problem was feature overload.
This is still the case to this day – there is no universal instant messaging standard but inroads have been made.
MSN couldn’t talk to AOL, AOL couldn’t talk to ICQ, etc. Well of course Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft all saw the potential and started creating their own instant messenger programs, however, unlike email or web pages there was no communication standard agreed upon – so there was no software interoperability. Keep in mind this was the time of Dial-Up! To be able to talk to family on the East Coast of the United States while I was living time zones away in Hawaii was fantastic! ICQ was brilliant in it’s simplicity – you could see when your friends and family around the world came online. ICQ is an instant messaging computer program, which was first developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis, now owned by Time Warner’s AOL subsidiary. I have been using instant messaging since it was born in 1996 – I have a 7 digit ICQ number. One, free application is here to save the day. And now that Twitter is gaining a foothold you are about to go insane!ĭeep Breath. Your buddy is a die-hard GoogleTalk user while everyone else is crazy about Facebook talk. Your brother is on AOL instant messenger, your cousin uses MSN instant messenger.
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